This is a direct quote from the http://www.girlscouts.org website:
The question is, why not? Wouldn’t web sales be EXTREMELY lucrative for their business model?
I can venture some guesses.
Girl Scouts is (a) decentralized and (b) about building character and personal responsibility, etc. So while GS wants your money, the local councils/troops are actually rather independent. The current distribution model is that cookies are distributed to local councils/troops from the factories, and then the girls either sell them at a table in some public place or take orders and deliver them individually.
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Who takes the orders? Do you hire people to do this at the national level? Do you make online consumers route requests directly to the nearest council/troop? Will the people at the council have time to deal with such requests?
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Who fulfills such orders? Do you create a new mail-order-style shipping system? Or do you have the local troops drop them off (to the homes of people they’ve never met–at least at present, the girls and their parents can choose which doors to knock on and which to avoid)?
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Who gets the money? Does the National center take it in and then divide the spoils among all of its councils equally? Does it give it to the council nearest to the consumer? Does it keep it for itself to fund national-level programs? Do any of these orders, in any way, rob local troops of badly needed funds? (“No thanks, young lady, I ordered mine on-line this year.”) It would not go over well with local troops, methinks.
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Do on-line orders advance the mission of the Girl Scouts? While I’m sure they’d be happy to have the money, the fact is that part of the cookie-selling campaign is about the girls earning the money for their troops themselves. (Granted, they have no other way of getting the money, but I think some would argue that the girls going out there in the world to sell cookies teaches them a measure of responsibility and shows them the value of hard work, etc.)
I can venture some guesses.
Girl Scouts is (a) decentralized and (b) about building character and personal responsibility, etc. So while GS wants your money, the local councils/troops are actually rather independent. The current distribution model is that cookies are distributed to local councils/troops from the factories, and then the girls either sell them at a table in some public place or take orders and deliver them individually.
-
Who takes the orders? Do you hire people to do this at the national level? Do you make online consumers route requests directly to the nearest council/troop? Will the people at the council have time to deal with such requests?
-
Who fulfills such orders? Do you create a new mail-order-style shipping system? Or do you have the local troops drop them off (to the homes of people they’ve never met–at least at present, the girls and their parents can choose which doors to knock on and which to avoid)?
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Who gets the money? Does the National center take it in and then divide the spoils among all of its councils equally? Does it give it to the council nearest to the consumer? Does it keep it for itself to fund national-level programs? Do any of these orders, in any way, rob local troops of badly needed funds? (“No thanks, young lady, I ordered mine on-line this year.”) It would not go over well with local troops, methinks.
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Do on-line orders advance the mission of the Girl Scouts? While I’m sure they’d be happy to have the money, the fact is that part of the cookie-selling campaign is about the girls earning the money for their troops themselves. (Granted, they have no other way of getting the money, but I think some would argue that the girls going out there in the world to sell cookies teaches them a measure of responsibility and shows them the value of hard work, etc.)
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Who administers the web sales? Do local troops do it? Will this encourage pedophiles to hunt down girls selling cookies online? Could be easily fixed, of course, but there’s a huge, justified, knee-jerk fear about kids going on the internet, period–not to mention the scam/fraud/payment problems they could face, which are somewhat ameliorated by selling cookies only to people you know or to people on a cash-and-carry basis.
Talk about ground zero for internet pedophiles.
I infer from this section (below) of the Girl Scouts website, that the primary purpose of their business model is not to make as much money as possible from the sale of cookies.
(Must type faster – Toadspittle has already presented an excellent case.)
Might as well throw in some facts from the FAQs
Q: Are all Girl Scout cookies® kosher? A: Yes. All Girl Scout cookies® are kosher.
Q: What are the best-selling Girl Scout cookies®?
A: Our biggest sellers are:
Thin Mints 25%
Samoas®/Caramel deLites™ 19%
Peanut Butter Patties®/Tagalongs® 13%
Peanut Butter Sandwich/Do-si-dos™ 11%
Shortbread/Trefoils 9%
The other varieties combined account for the remaining 23%.
No worse than randomly waltzing up to someone’s home you don’t know and peddling your wares from a Radio Flyer wagon, I’d wager.
Some excellent points all around, I agree, but I remember a few years ago when the GSofA put the kibosh on a small web page put up by a Girl Scout troop who wanted to sell their wares locally. The page obviously didn’t contain any ordering software, just a phone number where people could call and leave their personal information and what they wanted to order.
I can completely understand the desire to keep kids safe, but I can’t really believe that’s the reason the GSofA doesn’t want to pursue the internet as a viable option.
Veteran Girl Scout leader here. Girl Scouts have rules for everything, whether they make sense or not. With regards to the cookies, it’s all a local thing. For instance, we have a selection of 8 cookies for $3 /box and get them from Little Brownie Bakers. Other areas may get their cookies from somewhere else. While everyone has Thin Mints, the other cookies can be different. So you have branding issues.
Also, the individual councils are free to charge whatever they want for the cookies. A couple years ago the next council over was charging $2.50 for the same cookies. I’ve heard of the cookies selling for as much as $6/box in more urban areas. If I can sell my cookies on the internet for $3 box it isn’t really fair for areas that sell them for more.
A couple years ago I did try to sell off my excess cookies on ebay. GSUSA did not especially appreciate that. I can’t see why after the cookie sell is over why that is not an option, but I don’t make the GSUSA rules. If I did, it would a lot different than it does.
Wow. Completely non-sensical stated reasons for a good policy.
Good policy… allow girl scouts to practice interacting with the community, and selling.
Claiming by subtext that a purely on-line store selling the Girl Scout cookies (with no home deliveries by actual Scouts) is dishonest and somewhat disturbing, coming from an organization that is supposed to uphold positive moral development and values.
This sounds more like a Fortune 500 PR machine talking than a voluntary social charitable/educational sorority association. Coincidence? Hmmm…
You’re looking at what amounts to protectionist legislation. Think of girl scout troops as franchises that are guaranteed a certain degree of market exclusivity. Starting an internet store is the first step down a slippery slope that ends with a virtual equivalent of a Super WalMart opening in a small town and shutting down most of the small family businesses in the neighborhood.
Dosen’t ebay have restrictions on sales of food items except for collectable packaging
I don’t know if all areas have this rule, but in my area Girl Scouts are not allowed to go door-to-door. Ever. I do agree with your comment that it would be dangerous.
So what is to proper offical way to sell them…
There is a great series of Dilbert strips about people bringing the cookie orders to work with them. It also delivers IMHO a painful truth about the whole program, that in many ways if it was just the girl scouts selling them, the program would not be anywhere near as effective or profitable.
Many of my wifes coworkers bring these orders to work and sell hundreds of boxes of cookies in a few hours, the girl scout in question would not have even been allowed into the building.
Bump
I think I have a legit question here…If you prohibit a group of girl scouts from doing door to door sales, how do they sell their cookies?
If parents are doing all the work then you are completely and totally defeating the claimed mission of the program.
In answer to the question - you park the girls in a convenient public spot and wait for customers to come to them.
And yes, I agree that when parents are selling them (which I’ve seen many times), it defeats one of the major reasons behind it.
Up here, the local GS troops set up tables with stacks of cookies right outside the doors of all the supermarkets. Extraordinarily nice of the grocery stores to allow such direct competition, I think.
Oh, and for those in risk of “Thin Mint” cookie withdrawal pangs: the ‘Grasshopper’ thin mint cookies sold by Keeblers are indistinguisable from genuine GS “Thin Mint” cookies, but with two advantages:
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They only cost half as much.
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They are available year round.
